This weekend I ferryboated across the Sea of Marmara to check out Bursa, early Ottoman capital and home of the famous Iskender kebab. Bursa should also be famous, I think, for the formal wear sold by a disproportionate number of its windowed stores. In such windows, it's a 50-50 split between poofy-skirted dresses (including but not limited to wedding dresses) and sequined-and-feathered white outfits for boys ages 6-12. In this context, "outfit" means pants, shirt, vest, turban, cape, and scepter. Lucky boys get a sash indicative of royalty or a high school homecoming court nomination and those afraid of looking like a powder puff are appeased with a Spiderman cape.
Tourists, like myself and the Japanese, haven't spoilt Bursa nearly as much as Istanbul. It has the nickname "Green Bursa" for it's parks, but is largely an industrial city now, which doesn't attract as many crowds. We weren't hassled in the market, prices weren't as inflated, and people obliged our picture taking.
This happy town will doubtless continue operating this way until 2012 when the Mayan calendar predicts that the poofy dress district will produce a terror imaginable by only the Japanese tourists who don't even go to Bursa: BRIDEZILLA!
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